Prevention and Reversal of Species Extinction
The must-read summary of “Resurrection Science: Conservation, De-Extinction and the Precarious Future of Wild Things,” by M. R. O’Connor.
Many species are threatened with extinction because of anthropogenic global warming, degraded habitats, overexploitation, disease, and invasive species. In Resurrection Science, journalist M. R. O’Connor introduces us to renowned scientists who try to use expensive, high-tech, and often controversial efforts to save endangered and even extinct species. Each chapter focuses on a unique species like the northern white rhinoceros, the passenger pigeons, and the Tanzanian rainforest spray toads, incorporating their natural history and evolutionary biology and raising many ethical, environmental, and philosophical issues on this new science.
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Read this book to understand the science and ethics of the prevention and reversal of species extinction.
Genre: STUDY AIDS / Study GuidesThere have been five mass extinction events in Earth’s history. In the Fifth Extinction 66 million years ago, 76 percent of all species died. It took millions of years to recover.
In the early 1990s. scientists predicted that we’re on track for a human-caused mass extinction called the Sixth Extinction. They estimated 27,000 species would become extinct every year and 50 percent of all species would become extinct in the twenty-first century.
The good news is that the scientist had overestimated these extinction rates. The actual extinctions have been fewer than expected. But the forces driving extinction remain—anthropogenic global warming, degraded habitats, overexploitation, disease, and invasive species. For those species that can’t adapt fast enough to changing environments, their survival depends on human intervention, from captive breeding and preserving their DNA to frozen zoos to de-extinction. Scientists have not only cloned endangered animals, they are also working to resurrect animals that are already extinct such as mammoths and passenger pigeons.
But the actions we take can affect the evolution of species. The ethical question is whether humans, knowing their evolutionary impact on species, should engineer evolution in the direction they want. This might include imbuing the species with characteristics to help it survive environmental impacts, translocating the species, and creating new, more resilient hybrids.
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Portuguese
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Already translated.
Translated by Junior Mota
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Spanish
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Already translated.
Translated by Gloria Rivas
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Author review: Excellent work and timely delivery! |
